Monday, October 15, 2012

I am a little disheartened that the majority of homes in my neighborhood haven't decorated for the High Holiday. Nuthin'. Literally nothing. Just the house around the corner with the tombstones, and one other house near that one has some lights. And my neighbor has a circle of small ghosts. But blocks in either direction - nothing at all.

It seems it's always one in every five houses around me that will decorate...not a lot, some lights a few scarecrows, tombstones, small ghosts hanging from trees....Then there's the guy with the big animatronic skeleton and pirate ship show and his graveyard with moving tombstones and a life size skeleton roasting marshmellows over a fickering cloth flame fire. I just can't understand why more people don't decorate...there are a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses in my area, maybe that's one reason.

It's unusually sparse this year. All the kids in our part of the neighborhood seem to be going in to high school, or are moving out; a lot of our neighbors used to decorate for their kids, and I suspect their outgrowing trick-or-treating has played a role.

Aside from the "happy/cutesy" scarecrows, hay bales and a few uncarved pumpkins....only one other house in our neighborhood is decorated aside from ours. Is it due to the 31st landing on a Wednesday or what? Very discouraging :( We haven't finished yet and are usually done the first weekend of October.

The other Halloween fanatic on our street has just now started to trickle out her decorations. I guess it's still considered "early". I decorated this Friday and by Sunday my neighbors followed with their modest decoration pattern (cutesy stuff, flags). Some spirit is better than none! I did notice that a few neighbors were tacking up their Christmas lights presumably for a November 1st launch. Christmas for 2 months is considered acceptable. Halloween for more than a few days is considered weird. YAY!

Neighborhood has always been scarce. It is a big disappointment. My favorite childhood memories are from fall/Halloween. And though my husband and I do not have children, I love being a part of making memories for children that trick or treat in our neighborhood. In a way it feels like these kinds of traditions are being left behind. I remember Halloween being so active and fun...it was always a build up to the big day/evening. It's strange because I figure the same people from my generation are the ones with children now...so why are they skimping on Halloween?!! Are they trying to phase it out? Did they not have the same fantastic experience as I did as a child? Who knows, folks nowadays are definitely taking a different approach to raising children...maybe that's part of it...to deprive them of the magic, wonder, and mysticism of Halloween (I'll get off my soapbox now). I really don't know why. In our subdivision of over 150 houses, I think there may be 5 houses that have done anything for Halloween. And I'm not saying that their decor is up to snuff...I'm talking about ANYTHING....from a pumpkin or two, bales of hay, the paper skeleton on the door. Our house is the only one with ghosts hanging in the trees and zombie groundbreakers. And just yesterday I learned that one family with five children, not far from us, doesn't even celebrate Halloween!!! WTH?!!!! I'm so mad at that....I don't even know why, but I am. No matter, when Halloween night rolls around, all the neighborhood children flock to our house. My husband dresses like a ghoul from hell and his brother runs after the trick or treaters with a chainsaw. They say "We remember y'all from last year and we couldn't wait to come back." And that really warms our hearts.

Neighborhood seems about normal, although I'm ashamed to say I didn't get my own decorations out until the first week of October. Normally I'm up and decorated by the middle of September, but this year the workload kept me decorating the internet instead until well past October 1st.

Then again, the inside of my house looks like it's decorated for Halloween all year (to most people), so there's that, right?

I recall quite a few houses had decorations on my block last year, the first year we lived there. I remember being happy about that.

Now those same houses have nothing.That's peculiar.

Hopefully they go nuts this coming week/weekend. I mean, just a pumpkin on the porch would be cool.Anything.

As a kid, I remember lawns with legs sticking up from foam tombstones...webs on bushes...hangmen in trees (sad that it's a "controversial" prop these days)...and paper decorations on almost every door and in every window.

My favorite thing to see is still hand-made decorations taped up into the windows. I kept mine every year and taped them back up until they eventually fell apart. Those construction paper monstrosities are powerfully nostalgiac - the smell of that paper and Elmer's Glue still gives me a little charge.

Well said cimking. Decorations seem to be a little light this year, but we stepped up our game inside & out. Went nuts on Retroween and the old school cut outs are scotch taped in the front window with the classic light up plastic pumpkin / cat in the middle. This is usually flanked by our 2 real all black cats sitting in the window..which is pretty neat.

All the parents in the neighborhood know that every year a 6'4" Michael will make an apprearence at our house on Halloween night and NEVER break character. A few years ago I decided to give out large candy bars thinking I would be the toast of the town, but no one seemed to care. When I was kid we would have flipped our lids for a giant snickers bar. I have contemplated giving PS3 games to the trick or treater with the best costume just to create a buzz. They do seem to appreciate the Myers get up though.

We actually are experiencing an uptick in decorations, not much though, but thats to be expected as I'm in a condo, and I'm in Las Vegas. I'm used to being the only person in the entire complex that decorates at all for Halloween, so I'm happy to see a neighbor in the next building and who faces the major street has put up those Jason and Freddy store-bought (gemmy? maybe)animatronics in his windows with mood lighting. I might get more ToT's this year as a result.

There are a few houses around the corner that are all-out cheesy Halloween/ghettofied yard haunts and I kinda dig it. At least it's something, as one person said above. And like, who's to say there aren't neon orange spiderwebs FOR REALS some place in the world, you know?

On my block? NOTHING. I was expecting at least SOMETHING this weekend, but nothing. What the heck am I gunna do with a huge box of full-size Hershey Bars, dude? ;)

We decorated Saturday and it's modest, and slightly girly, but we got a ton of stares while putting it up, comments from the street and even a car driving by said, "hey!!! Halloween decorations!!!!" We just moved here so I have zero idea how it's all gunna go down.

issemip9Seems very thin in the midwest also Rot. Just commenting to the wife the other day about it. Like you, I thought this weekend would be it. ..nothing.Last year was great, and this year is a disapointment.Come on- just a string of orange lights would make me happy now.

I was the first one out the gate in my neighborhood. Decorated Sept 30th. 1st week of Oct. I looked to see if anyone else on our street or the surrounding streets...nothing. I usually place spiderwebs covering up the whole porch with a large spider as the centerpiece. the week after about 3 houses did that same and placed spiderwebs on the porches. I felt a better that some people are now starting to decorate.

This past weekend was our town wide garage sale so I took advantage of it and walked (yes I said walked) around to see all the stuff people had. I picked up a few dolls that I will behead or gouge out their eyes. At the same time I did notice few yards decorated. The ones that did maybe had one Halloween related item....when we first moved here there were many over the top yards.

I got back home ( legs killin me)Ate some lunch and then saw the neighbor getting her mail. I went out and asked if it was alright if I added a few things in her yard. She said of course.( because shes cool like that)I will shoot you a pic of what I did. I cut my pillars of pain down to 4ft and let the neighbor a block away borrow them because I really havent used them in a couple of years.

I do need to throw some of the old props out but if I can spread them around the neighborhood...what the hell.

Same shit here. I think our unit may be the only one in our entire development that is decorated.

I tried walking my dogs in different neighborhoods all last week.. and the most I saw were a couple pumpkins and some fall decorations out front of houses. I usually look forward to taking a photo stroll at some point.. but there isn't anything to take pictures of. Sucks

Same here, there used to be one cat down the road that would have full size zombies overtaking his lawn, it always seemed to put the "spirit" in his next door neighboors. However this year, nothing, no zombies, nothing..

So far with my schedule ive got the pumpkins out and the blow ups for my son. Our porch and railings are lit up with the flickering of orange and purple lights. This weeekend i hope to be off so i can get my scarecrow up.

We have nothing around us. The few I do see down the road are either inflatables or the Christmas lights turned orange thing. I hate when people basically do christmas light setup just with orange lights.

We have quite a few decorated houses in our neighborhood. I'm actually impressed this year because it seemed like everyone got their stuff out on the earlier side. I wasn't the first one like I normally am =)

I think we probably have one of the bigger displays...(which isn't really that big this year) but it's good to see that other people enjoy the Holiday as well!

Discovered quite a few on my Sunday walk. Lots of stalk/bale/uncarved jack combos, lots of retro window card cutouts (cool!), a couple homes in some kind of blinged out battle for street supremacy, some gemmy stuff on porches. Lots of Walmart/Michael's smiling scarecrows. Ours doesn't drop until after a weekend away visiting our daughter at college. Had one of the witches in the garden.....naked....testing her hat/head and some neighbors came out to look. Pretty geeked...

I'm in a new house this year and haven't done much decorating yet. I usually start the inside at the end of August (and that's a grueling wait for me) and exterior at the beginning of October. I just haven't had time and there was too much to do before decorating could begin. Plus, this new (old--built in 1915) house has NO electrical outlets on the outside of the house! Hopefully it will be warm for the annual Halloween party and for when the kids trick-or-treat, so I can run extension cords out of the windows.

Yes, it's truly sad that hardly anyone in our community of 120 homes has ANYthing up. Right outside the community there is one home that does it up to the nines... nice to see! We have no young ones, but, I especially, absolutely love the holiday and go out of my way to give the tots to teens something to jump about! We did a haunted yard a few years back that people still talk about... man they had to sweat for their candy!! I don't know if it's because people are too busy, too short on cash, or what, but like some posters said, not even a pumpkin or two?!